Response to Nonsense English Post

 Jabberwocky

The Jabberwocky has lots of English words with made-up words interspersed, sometimes even whole sentences in English, which makes it significantly easier to understand than the other two nonsense English pieces. Some of the words seem to come from already existing English words, which helps the guessing of the word, although that could be my incorrect assumption. Most of the made-up words appear to be nouns and adjectives, which contributes to the guessability of the poem and the fantasy feel. It’s easy to imagine that I am in another world that still speaks English, but it just has it’s own creatures, names, and slang. 

Skwerl

The Skwerl video, similar to the Jabberwocky, included a mix of English and made-up words. However, Skwerl takes it a step further than Jabberwocky, making it just unintelligible. I felt so close to being able to understand it, but I couldn’t, at least not the full story. The video format did help me piece together some of the story, because it gave the clues of body language, tone of voice, and the context of the character’s actions. Looking at the script helped a lot as well, because it helped me see how it was (probably) formed from sentences, and then altered. Some of the gibberish sentences are close enough to English that I can guess what the authors were intending the sentence to mean.

Prisencolinensinainciusol

Unlike the other two nonsense English pieces, Prisencolinensinainciusol doesn’t seem to have any English words, relying instead on English phonotactics. I feel like the fact that Prisencolinensinainciusol is a song helps it feel like it could actually be in English; some actual English songs are kind of hard to understand due to the recording and how the melody distorts how the English sounds when spoken.